


retrouvaille

by siriuslydraco



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2018-12-15 20:18:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11813451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siriuslydraco/pseuds/siriuslydraco
Summary: Jaime and Sansa have found themselves leagues apart, with the thought of death separating them.





	retrouvaille

**Author's Note:**

> retrouvaille;  
> [French. meaning: rediscovery]] The joy of reuniting with someone after a long separation

It hadn't been the dragon that had caused the fearless heart of Jaime Lannister to twist with an agonising peril. It hadn't been the jaws of the tremendous beast that had caused him to cease all reason within his head; those great teeth bared at him menacingly as if it meant to rip him apart piece by piece. The frightening reality of looking upon this ancient creature was enough to turn his blood cold, but it would've had that affect on the bravest of men.

It was the _fire_ that had made him afraid. It was Daenerys Targaryen, the absolute disregard for his army that she held within herself and the frightening fiasco that she had so horribly created that had made Jaime think of things he'd rather forget. Soldiers lay burned and faceless, flesh peeling and stinking the air with a scent akin to cooking meat. Their screams filled the battlefield and then turned warped to his ears as he let the consuming thoughts of Aerys Targaryen fill his war wrecked mind. 

 _Burn them all._ The command of his former king sounded throughout the battlefield. It was whispered with every breath of dragons fire, it was hidden in the screams of his dying men and it was roaring within the depths of his memory. _Burn them all._  He had already killed one mad Targaryen, he could do it again. There was no instance, no moment of hesitation that caused him to stall whatever fleeting madness had taken him as he gripped the horses reigns tighter in his hand. 

"Come on boy!" he urged the white steed, the reigns now wrapped around his golden hand while his good one gripped a spear from the ground and pointed it towards his target. She was small and slight, silver haired and childlike as he rode towards _her_ and that great hulking beast as they rested beside the waters. Daenerys Targaryen was nothing more than a woman grown, and he immediately thought of his lady wife. 

For a moment he thought of what he was doing, just for a split second and then it was gone. The image of Sansa Stark should have been enough to stop him riding towards his most eminent death but it wasn't. It spurred him on more. If he was to succeed and kill this invader who wanted to claim his sisters throne then perhaps the world would be better to live in for women like Sansa. Her face was firmly etched behind his eyes as the horse charged harder and faster; the memory of her blue eyes and red hair sustaining the wavering bravery within his heart. He hadn't seen her in so long, not since Joffrey had been poisoned at his wedding and when she had been stolen away by the traitor Littlefinger, but her face was immortal in his imagination, and no fear from battle could erase it. 

 _I love you, sweet Sansa_ he thought as the sunlight and fire glinted off his spear as he came towards the dragon. Its eyes were amber and fiery, and terrifying, its ugly scaled head turning towards him as it curled around the slight frame of Daenerys Targaryen. He repeated his declaration in his mind again when he was sure he was going to die, the flames rising up from the dragons mouth just as Jaime was about to thrust the spear down its throat. 

It came suddenly then, the weight of something so great and heavy by his side that he was knocked from his horse. The flames that were meant to kill him billowed above him in a cloud of fiery inferno as he and his savior hurtled towards the murky waters; their arms wrapped tightly around him as they were plunged beneath the fire that raged above. It was dark beneath the surface, and suddenly he felt the arms slip from around him to be replaced by the crushing weight of his armor and he felt himself slowly sink deeper and deeper into the dark blue that surrounded him now. 

 _I'm going to drown,_ Jaime thought. But it wasn't death that he thought of then, or the gripping fear that was making his heart pound as the water filled his lungs. Strangely enough while he was sinking within the blue depths the only thought that occurred to him was Sansa's eyes. So blue, and always so beautiful. Those eyes that had captivated him since he had stood before her in the Sept of Baelor were perhaps more dangerous than the dragon he had just rode towards, and filled him with more fear than the whispered memory of a mad king. Tully blue enveloped him now, the waters embracing him as if he were a part of it, and he felt the presence of his lady wife more strongly than he ever had these years without her. Her eyes were the last thing he thought of before his own closed. 

He had always thought of drowning in hers and never resurfacing, and now as he sank deeper and deeper, his back hitting the bottom, he finally knew he had his wish.

* * *

The snow starts to fall harder and the winds blow harsher, and with them brings a coldness to Sansa she had thought died with Ramsay. It's a crippling fear that stalks her dreams and causes bumps to form on her skin no matter how close to a fire she sits. Her sister is home, but the thought and Arya's presence does not instill any comfort in her. 

Arya _hates_ her. It is plain in her sisters Stark eyes, and in the hard way she sets her jaw when she stands within the presence of the Lady of Winterfell. It is a hatred that Sansa feels she does not understand, and one she knows she does not deserve. Arya's bitterness to her is almost as painful as the frost that settles itself on her cheeks now as she stands atop the ramparts of the castle.

The horizon is white and blurred against the lightness of the winter sky, but somewhere along it she imagines a white horse and a golden knight emerging from the snow. It's something she pictures everyday, the image of Ser Jaime Lannister never far from her mind and she finds it sustains her while she listens to the slithering whispers of Littlefinger and the cutting threats from her sister. 

Sansa has not seen her lord husband in quite some time, not since the despicable King Joffrey perished at his own wedding; Jaime's face the last thing she saw before being dragged away on the orders of Lord Baelish. War and the horrific enslavement from the Boltons had caused leagues and years to separate them, but it has not made her give up hope that one day he'd come back. But perhaps he had not loved her as fiercely as she'd loved him; maybe he hadn't come because he didn't want her. She shivers then and it has nothing to do with the snow, her blue eyes closing for a second as she tries to rid the thought from her mind. The memory of Jaime's soft kisses and lingering gazes were the only thing that had sustained her throughout her torture, and she does not want to think that they were false. 

There's footsteps behind her, soft and slow and Sansa does not need to turn around to know who it is. 

"My Lady" the words are offered as a sneer, and she can hear the discontent in her sisters voice. It displeases her so much to hear the venom in her tone that she feels light headed. How is it that they've both suffered so much, yet the gods see it fit for them to lose each other too? All for a conflict Sansa can not understand. 

"Arya" Sansa keeps her voice tight, not knowing why her sister is here stalking her through the snow. She turns around to see her there, as tiny as ever but with a look in her large eyes that is altogether murderous. Sansa is immediately thrown, her heart rate increasing when she sees that Arya's hand is tightly clasped around the hilt of a dagger, but she stands up straighter while defiance sets into her features. 

"You know what I wonder late at night?" Arya asks her, an eyebrow raising in question as she begins stalking around her older sister "I wonder how you can stand here, where Father used to stand and call yourself Lady of Winterfell. How you can stay here in our home, in the North after what you did. How does it feel, knowing you betrayed our family?" 

" _Betrayed our family_?" Sansa emphasises with a voice that is threatening to crack at any moment. Hard realisation hits her then, when she realises why Arya has been looking at her so oddly of late, those eyes of hers watching everything she and Littlefinger do. _She thinks I betrayed my family. The family I so grievously miss._ Arya does not answer her, but pulls from her pocket an aged and rolled up scroll. Something within Sansa's heart thumps in terror, the muscle beating off the inside of her chest. She knows what it is before Arya can even read it and it feels almost that the world is spinning where she stands. 

"Do you know what this says?" her sister questions her, stopping her mad pacing and looking Sansa straight in her eyes. Arya is glad to see there is fear in them, and she triumphantly smiles at the sight. 

"I know" Sansa nods her head, eyeing the scroll that she knows she had written so many years ago "where did you get it?" 

"It's of no importance where I got it, but I have it now and that's all that matters. Do you want me to read it to you?" Arya childishly asks, knowing no matter what Sansa says she's going to read it anyway. There is a glint in Arya's eyes that makes Sansa's heart sink, and it's a rushing feeling that threatens to overwhelm her. She's been through so much to survive, why must it be fair that her own sister thinks she is against her family? 

"I already know what it says, I wrote it! Do you honestly think I would help the Lannisters _kill_ our father, all because I wanted to marry _Joffrey_?" Sansa asks her with narrowed eyes. The scroll in her hands is nothing but the words of a scared child, forced to write them at the demand of the Queen. Back then Sansa had been so naive that she'd believed if she had written to her brother then their father would be spared. 

"But you didn't marry Joffrey, did you? You married _Jaime_ _Lannister_. Tell me, how long did you wait until after father was dead to fall into bed with the Kingslayer? Was it months? Weeks?" her sister is fierce in all her anger, her face colored with a fury that Sansa feels she should shrink away from "Father was dead but you got exactly what you wanted, didn't you? Marrying a handsome knight and living in Kings Landing" 

"Do you think I wanted to marry Jaime Lannister? Do you think I wanted to live in that horrible place with that horrible family?" Sansa glares down at her, Tully meeting Stark eyes in the snowfall "I hated them for what they done to father and mother and Robb, just as much as you do. But Jaime was kind to me, he always was, and when Tywin Lannister married me to him instead of Joffrey I thought it was a blessing. I was tired of waiting for Robb to save me.He never came for me. He never traded prisoners for me. But Jaime saved me, Arya, in more ways than one. He made me feel safe when I was somewhere full of people that wanted me dead" 

"So marrying into the family of our enemies was the surest way to safety, was it? The family that had father executed? The family that allied with Lord Walder, who had Mother and Robb murdered? That was safety was it? Did he make you feel safe then, with our family's blood on his hands!" Arya is all wolf then, with her bared teeth and flashing eyes that sparkle in the snowfall like two venomous daggers. Sansa feels that if Arya could get away with it, she would surely murder Sansa here and now with that needle blade that hangs by her hip. 

"Don't tell me you would have done any different" the Lady tells her sister, eyes cast towards the child-like woman before her, but she is only met with narrowed eyes and a set jaw. 

"I would have died rather than betray my family" Arya tells her with a voice more suited to a man hardened by years of war. Arya does not talk like a summer child any longer, and that thought frightens Sansa more than anything. 

"I wanted to die too! You have no idea what it was like for me there" Sansa finds herself eyeing the snowy horizon yet again; watching where the land and the sky come together in a grey blur and she tries hard to imagine Jaime finally coming for her and taking her away. _But I once waited for Robb, and he never came_  . _Perhaps my Jaime will never come for me_ "there were days when I wanted to throw myself from the highest towers but I survived because I'm a Stark, and if I died then they'd have won. They would have broken me like they wanted to. But I _lived_ for you, for Bran, for Jon, for the hope that one day we'd be standing here again, as a family, ruling the North that was taken from us and not fighting like children" 

"I wanted to come back and find that my family were here. When Hot Pie told me I could hardly believe it. But I came home to find that a _Lannister_ rules over Winterfell" Arya's eyebrows are so highly raised that they make wrinkles appear in her forehead. In that moment she looks so much older than she is. Her face finally matching the maturity in which she acts. 

"I'm a Stark. I will always be a Stark" Sansa finds that she has repeated those words too often to people who would try to testify her claim and allegiance to the house she was born in. But having to say them to _Arya_ , to her own sister, is a murder of her soul. 

"Perhaps in blood, but your heart and your hand belong to a Lannister" the words hang heavy in the air, nothing but those words and snow falling between the two sisters for a length of time Sansa finds drags on too long. They are true- the words that Arya spoke- but the intent in which she spoke them is not. Sansa's heart _does_ belong to a Lannister, so does her hand, but her loyalty will always be to the North and to her family. Perhaps if the time came Jaime would be able to understand that, or maybe he would abandon her for his own loyalty. 

She doesn't want to think of that, the thought pushing itself from her mind and she finds it's an easy task to complete when a black shadow emerges from the snowfall. He's timid and dutiful as always- Maester Wolkan- and his head is bowed low as he stands before the sisters; Sansa and Arya looking like two ghosts of Stark women long dead before them. His face is grave when he looks at the ghost of Catelyn Tully, and something in Sansa's heart turns as cold as the ground she stands on. 

The scroll he hands her is sealed, so she knows the news he carries has not been read. But somehow it seems like Wolkan knows what the letter entails, and it unsettles her greatly. _Jon,_ she thinks, _oh gods not Jon._ She can not bear the thought of losing another sibling, and she prays the scroll does not tell her of his demise of imprisonment at the hands of a Targaryen. 

"A raven flew all night to carry this here, it's wings were almost frozen. It must be of the utmost importance, My Lady, I came as soon as it got here" the Maester tells her, and she offers him a weak smile as she breaks the seal- one that is not stamped with a house sigil- and rolls out the snow covered scroll. 

"It's from Tyrion Lannister" she breaths out, eyes darting to the signature at the bottom before reading anything else. She can feel Arya's eyes watching her with heavy lids at the mention of yet another person she considers an enemy to House Stark. 

She had not heard from Tyrion in years, no more than she'd heard from Jaime. The thought of him writing to her unsettles her greatly, but also pricks at her curiosity. It must be some news of Jon and Ser Davos, perhaps an invitation to meet with the Dragon Queen. One noble woman to another. But her stilling heart picks up rapidly as she takes the words in, beating and crashing against her rib cage. 

All previous arguments with Arya disappear as Sansa feels the world tilt before her. She can not help but reach for Arya in a way she feels she never has, and Arya- although tempered with rage towards the Lady of Winterfell- catches Sansa around the waist before she can fall, knees first, into the snow. There are no tears that come, only blackness in Sansa's eyes as the North and Arya's face begin to fade. She is cold and limp in Arya's arms and Maester Wolkan shouts for a guard to help carry the fainted Lady. 

She is frail and faint from grief, Arya can see that plain as day on her sisters beautiful face as she is carried away by the Maester and a bustling guard who is flustered at the thought of holding Lady Stark in his arms. She watches them leave her, standing there in the snow with a numbness washing over her as she stares after them. There is a fear there- deep within herself that she has allowed to be buried- and it is a fear of loss that stifles her. She like Sansa, thinks of their brother Jon and the horrifying thought that he too must be lost to them. 

Trembling hands- so normally steady from years of sword fighting- reach towards the blanket of snow on the ground where the scroll from Tyrion Lannister now sits. She is dry mouthed and her heart is beating nervously in her chest as she starts to read, but with each word that passes her mind her heart steadies and all that is left is an echo of sickening guilt and a delight that is slowly overshadowed by confusion. 

 _Sansa_ , the letter reads

_I write to you as your good-brother, and as someone who has always held the highest amount of fondness for you. You will not have heard it from anyone else, so I must write to you with the grievous news that your dear husband Jaime has perished on the battle field. I fear telling you this will not better your state of mind, but I only hope you remember Jaime as he was, and how much you meant to him._

_Tyrion Lannister._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
